Menken, Adah IsaacsInfelicia

HEMLOCK IN THE FURROWS.

I.

O CROWNLESS soul of Ishmael!Uplifting and unfolding the white tent of dreamsagainst the sunless base of eternity!Looking up through thy dumb desolation for whitehands to reach out over the shadows, downward, from thegolden bastions of God's eternal Citadel!Praying for Love to unloose the blushing bindings ofhis nimble shaft and take thee up to his fullest fruition!Poor Soul! hast thou no prophecy to gauge the distancebetwixt thee and thy crown?Thy
crown?Alas! there is none.Only a golden-rimmed shadow that went before thee,marking in its tide barren shoals and dust.At last resting its bright length down in the valley oftears.Foolish soul! let slip the dusty leash.Cease listening along the borders of a wilderness for thelost echoes of life.Drift back through the scarlet light of Memory into thedarkness once more.A corpse hath not power to feel the trying of its hands.

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II.

To-night, O Soul! Shut off thy little rimmings of Hope,and let us go back to our hemlock that sprang up in thefurrows.Let us go back with bleeding feet and try to break upthe harvestless ridges where we starved.Let us go down to the black sunset whose wings of fireburnt out thy flowery thickets of Day, and left a Night toswoop down the lonesome clouds to thee.Go back to the desolate time when the dim stars lookedout from Heaven, firmly and blank, like eyes in the widefront of some dead beast.Go, press thy nakedness to the burnt, bare rocks, underwhose hot, bloodless ribs the River of Death runs blackwith human sorrow.To-night, O soul! Fly back through all the grave-yardsof thy Past.Fly back to them this night with thy fretful wings, eventhough their bloody breadth must wrestle long againstHell's hollow bosom!

III.

Jealous Soul!The stars that are trembling forth their silent messagesto the hills have none for thee!The mother-moon that so lovingly reacheth down herarms of light heedeth not thy Love!See, the pale pinions that thou hast pleaded for gatherthemselves up into rings and then slant out to the dust!The passion-flowers lift up their loving faces and open

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their velvet lips to the baptism of Love, but heed not thywarm kisses!Shut out all this brightness that hath God's Beauty andliveth back the silence of His Rest.Cease knocking at the starry gate of the wondrousrealm of Song.

Hush away this pleading and this praying.Go back to thy wail of fetter and chain!Go back to thy night of loving in vain!

IV.

O weak Soul! Let us follow the heavy hearse that boreour old Dream out past the white-horned Daylight ofLove.Let thy pale Dead come up from their furrows ofwinding-sheets to mock thy prayers with what thy daysmight have been.Let the Living come back and point out the shadowsthey swept o'er the disk of thy morning star.Have thou speech with them for the story of its swimming down in tremulous nakedness to the Red Sea ofthe Past.Go back and grapple with thy lost Angels that stand interrible judgement against thee.Seek thou the bloodless skeleton once hugged to thydepths.Hath it grown warmer under thy passionate kissings?Or, hath it closed its seeming wings and shrunk itswhite body down to a glistening coil?Didst thou wait the growth of fangs to front the arrowsof Love's latest peril?

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Didst thou not see a black, hungry vulture wheelingdown low to the white-bellied coil where thy Heaven hadonce based itself?O blind Soul of mine!

V.

Blind, blind with tears!Not for thee shall Love climb the Heaven of thycolumned Hopes to Eternity!Under the silver shadow of the cloud waits no blushingstar thy tryst.Didst thou not see the pale, widowed West loose herwarm arms and slide the cold burial earth down upon thebare face of thy sun!Gazing upon a shoal of ashes, thou hast lost the waythat struck upon the heavy, obstructive valves of thegrave to thy Heaven.Mateless thou needs must vaguely feel along the dark,cold steeps of Night.Hath not suffering made thee wise?When, oh when?

VI.

Go down to the black brink of Death and let its coolwaters press up to thy weary feet.See if its trembling waves will shatter the grand repeating of thy earth-star.See if the eyes that said to thee their speechless Loveso close will reach thee from this sorrowful continent ofLife.

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See if the red hands that seemed thy shroud will comearound thy grave.Then, O Soul! Thou mayst drag them to the very edgesof the Death-pit, and shake off their red shadows!Thy strong vengeance may then bind the black-wingedcrew down level with their beds of fire?

VII.

But wait!Take up the ruined cup of Life that struck like aplanet through the dark, and shone clear and full as westarved for the feast within.Go down to the black offings of the Noiseless Sea, andwait, poor Soul!Measure down the depth of thy bitterness and wait!Bandage down with the grave-clothes the pulses of thydying life and wait!Wail up thy wild, desolate echoes to the pitying armsof God and wait!Wait, wait!